Montgomery woman hopes her experience in coping with tragedy can be used to help others.
By: Steve Rauscher
MONTGOMERY On Sept. 10, Kathy Daniels Tedeschi was a member of a tiny minority.
Her husband, Bill Daniels, was killed when Pan Am Flight 103 exploded above Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988, the victim of a terrorist attack.
Since the attacks on World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, however, that small, sad group of families torn apart by terrorism has grown into a nationwide fraternity, with thousands of new members still in the midst of a long, painful initiation.
Ms. Tedeschi wants to help them.
"You’re kind of floundering at first," she said in her Montgomery home Wednesday. "No one thought this would happen in the United States, and you think it’s not going to happen to you. But it happened to me."
She hopes now that her experience can guide others.
In the months and years that followed her husband’s death, Ms. Tedeschi with a group of other victims’ relatives put 30,000 miles on her car, driving up and down the East Coast, telling anyone who would listen, especially congressmen, about the need for greater airport security while she tried to come to grips with death of her husband.
"Because of us, they started asking people ‘Did you pack your bag?’ at the airport," she said. "And of course, any idiot could just say yes. I felt like we were trying to do something, but it obviously wasn’t enough."
But fighting for her cause, she said, however successfully, helped her cope with the loss of her husband.
"It helps so much to have a focus to work toward rather than just sitting there crying all the time," she said. "I wanted to make something out of his death.
"The thing about a terrorist incident is that it’s murder and you think, ‘Somebody actually murdered them.’ And it wasn’t like Bill did anything to make Qaddafi (the Libyan leader who is blamed for funding the Pan Am bombing) mad. Qaddafi didn’t know him and he didn’t care. There’s a horror that comes from knowing this person did this to you and had so little respect for human life."
Eventually, Ms. Tedeschi found a few small consolations as time passed, she said. In 1989, President George H. W. Bush presented her and all the Pan Am victims’ families with a folded American flag in a glass case.
"That meant a lot to me," she said. "It meant a lot to be able to tell my kids that their dad died because he was an American. He died for his country."
Eleven years later, this past March, an international court in the Netherlands convicted one of the Libyans accused of committing the bombing of murder. Ms. Tedeschi said she flew twice to the Netherlands to watch the trial, and commuted often to New York, where she was allowed to watch the trial on closed-circuit television.
"I don’t know if it’s possible to get closure," Ms. Tedeschi said. "It was hard and it brought back a lot of stuff, but I’m glad that I had that."
A consolation denied to her, however, that may not be denied to the families of those who died Sept. 11, she said, is the new awareness among the country’s leaders of the dangers of terrorism.
"Sometimes I felt like there was apathy in the government," she said. "I felt like we were just getting lip service. I don’t think that’s going to happen now. … People forgot about us pretty quick, but I don’t think anyone’s going to forget about this."
The sheer number of victims is likely to ensure that no one will forget about the attack two weeks ago. And while each of those close to any of the victims will have to grieve in his or her own way, Ms. Tedeschi said their greatest strength is each other.
"Everybody’s different, and everybody handles things the way that they handle them," she said. "But the thing that helped me most was getting to know other (victims’) family members."
The survivors formed a support group called Victims of Pan Am Flight 103. Ms. Tedeschi met regularly with family members of six other victims in the central New Jersey area. Thirteen years later, she still speaks to many of them.
"You’re getting together with people who are dealing with the same thing you are," she said. "It’s a bond that you have with nobody else in the world."
Talking, she said, helped her deal with the jumble of emotions she experienced after her husband’s death.
"Its all right to be angry, you’ll get beyond that," she said. "I was angry at Bill for dying. I thought, ‘How dare you leave me with these unfinished things?’ But that’s normal.
"As a mother (of three), I went through a period where I would buy anything for my kids because I wanted to make it up to them that their daddy wasn’t there, and that’s not good," she said. "But that’s your tendency.
"I couldn’t stand to be in the house for dinner because we’d always had dinner together. So we always went out to eat. It got to where my kids hated doing it. It was a while before I could sit down and cook a meal," she said.
Slowly, Ms. Tedeschi said, she learned to move on, mostly through the constant communication with the victims of Pan Am Flight 103, and she believes the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks should do the same.
"You’re talking to people who know what you’re going through, and you know what they’re going through. But you’re also focusing on something positive," she said. "And in the long run, what are we on earth for? You’ve got to make your life count."
Ms. Tedeschi welcomes calls from family members of the World Trade Center disaster. Her number is (908) 359-7468.

